Students who grew up browsing the Web are skilled in what is usually
referred to as abduction, a reasoning process that starts with a set of
specific observations and then generates the best possible explanation of those
observations. In order to exploit the abduction skills of contemporary
students, we have developed digital CS1/2 study packs that promote and support
active learning through abduction, i.e., abductive learning. The study packs
integrate a variety of digital resources: online self-guided labs, e-texts,
tutorial links, sample programs, quizzes, and slides. These online packs
stimulate students to learn abductively by browsing, searching, and performing
self-guided lab experiments. In two years of study pack use, the failure rate
in the CS1/2 courses at ChapmanUniversity has been
reduced from 14% to 5%. The study packs have been published online at studypack.com and adopted in various
institutions.

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Copyright Note:

Copyright ACM, 2007. This is the author's version of the
work. It is posted here by permission of ACM for your personal use. Not for
redistribution. The definitive version is published in SIGCSE'07, March 7–11,
2007, Covington, Kentucky, USA, ISS# 1-59593-055-8/06/0006, http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1227504.1227318.